Wednesday, January 23, 2019

For Christmas, we bought Reed a new microscope and some goodies to go with it - including blank slides. This morning, after my normal breadmaking, I thought it would be fun to look at the dough and yeast under the microscope. So Reed and I spent a half hour being amateur scientists in our office.

First was a chunk of our bread dough -- flour, salt, water, and yeast, having risen overnight:

Then a bit of dry yeast, which wasn't particularly exciting:

I thought that if we dyed our samples with iodine, they might pop a bit more. The bread dough turned out to be pretty tough to do -- it didn't seem that the iodine really penetrated the mix terribly much. Around the periphery, though, we did get an interesting result -- we all thought it looked very much like a top-down view of a forest:

The yeast, though, was quite interesting:

His microscope isn't setup for taking pictures, so unfortunately the quality isn't great.

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

My keg's thermostat stopped working, so I had to rebuild it. This time, it went significantly better than the first one, probably because this time I had soldering flux and because I made such a monstrosity last time that I've learned a little bit about what not to do.

I made a bike rack for in our garage, which should help protect Jake's new bike and my motorcycle.

Reed and I went to Monster Jam with our cub scout pack

And in the evening, I busted out some brewing equipment and started an oatmeal stout.

Reed was super excited for me to come home on Monday. We texted each other as I was on the bus home. When I got home, "Dad, I am ready to jump on you ♥"

My first attempt to use spent beer grains in bread. We'll see how it turns out in the morning.

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Getting ready for our Christmas party with my French meetup, the boys wanted to get their own button-up shirts and ties. They learned how to tie a Windsor and are now pros.

One of the tables at the Microsoft Garage, which is a neat design I'm going to attempt to replicate at some point.

Speaking of the Garage, one of the guys I run into on a regular basis has this in his office/neighborhood at work.

Christmas Eve hike with the family to Central Peak. (We didn't actually go the whole way, which is okay.)

At the start of the new year, I was so close to having finished my French version of A Brief History of Time. Jake sent "Little Spot" with me to work so I could read with him on the bus. I don't know how much Little Spot understood.

Roasting a pound of coffee (which takes maybe an hour?)

Oh yeah, and buying another 14 pounds of coffee:

We bought Jake a new bike for Christmas, and bright and early the next day, he wanted to go out on a bike ride.